


Nurture

by Phillammon



Category: Sleepless Domain (Webcomic)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, For once I am not here to make you sad, HEY LOOK IT'S THOSE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T MALEE, Hurt/Comfort, Just playing it safe with those tags but this is mostly about:, Look I swear it's cute, Mentions of Blood, Mortality, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phillammon/pseuds/Phillammon
Summary: Team Bloom had a close call tonight, and Chrysanthemum Bloom's been shaken up. So Magical Girl Rose Bloom takes it upon herself to calm her teammate/best friend/girlfriend.Commissioned by Krekalie. Posted with permission. I had so much fun writing these characters you have no idea.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Rose Bloom / Chrysanthemum Bloom
Kudos: 15





	Nurture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Krekalie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krekalie/gifts).



Kiku was real quiet tonight.

You know how when you're feeling an emotion really, unimaginably strongly, it's like you're not feeling it at all?

Like, for example, me getting angry. When I get really _really_ angry, I look furious. When I get really _really **really**_ angry, I look totally calm. And then sometimes the guy _making_ me angry thinks that I'm backing down, and then they start going again, and then I punch them so hard that I cut my knuckles knocking the bastard's teeth out, and then I have to go talk to a doctor cause it won't stop bleeding, and then I have to lie to them that a cat bit me or something and they don't believe me at all because it's obviously not a cat tooth that did that and then they call my dad out and then I get suspended for three months.

Y'know. To use a deliberately nonspecific example.

He deserved it. It was worth it.

But anyway. Kiku being quiet. Kiku’s never quiet. She’s got a borderline pathological need to put up this image of **Chrysanthemum Bloom, The Team Leader** , and when your powers don’t let you lead from the front, that leads to a lot of order-giving, all the time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a complaint. She’s got a good eye for the battlefield, and I can only be so aware while in the thick of combat. An extra pair of eyes can be a lifesaver. She's a pretty awesome leader that way.

So when halfway through the night she suddenly shuts up with the tactical calls and switches to just telling us where we're patrolling next, it's pretty obvious to me that something's spooked her.

Except she looks fine.

Which probably means that she is _scared out of her mind_.

So, when the barrier came down and the three of us split and Violet headed off home for the night, I decided to catch up with Kiku and declare an Emergency Sleepover at her place. My parents are always cool with it, Kiku can never say no to me even when she's at 100%, and her parents _love_ me, so they had no problem with it. (All my girlfriends' parents love me. That's my superpower.) (I mean, that and the whole magical-thorn-spear-summoning thing. But parents loving me is _way_ more useful.) 

Which is how I came to be sitting on my best friend-slash-team-leader-slash-girlfriend's bedroom floor at three in the morning with her sobbing incoherently into my lap.

Isn't my life great?

I don’t know how long we were like that- Kiku crying and shaking, me stroking her head, tracing gentle circles in her close-cut hair and planting the occasional kiss on the top of her head. I also didn’t care. I would have sat there forever if that’s what was needed. If that’s what she needed.

She was the first to speak, after however long it was. Her voice was rough, hoarse, and deeply, deeply tired. Not “sleepy” tired. Weary. Drained.

“You noticed, huh?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

We remained still for minutes more. Her crying had stilled now, though glistening trails still shone on her cheeks, even in the darkness of her room. I didn’t press further, continuing to trace soft patterns in her hair. No rush. I trusted that she’d open up when she was ready, and she trusted me not to push her. That silent understanding was all we needed.

Eventually, she rolled over in my lap, looking up at me, and answered the question I’d carefully not asked.

“I almost killed you tonight.”

Ah. Yes. That would do it.

“The bug thing?”, I asked, and was rewarded with a weak nod. Well, that explained a lot. 

Rewind a few hours. Normal patrol route, normal patrol formation. Nothing out of the ordinary. Good guys: Me at ground level. Chrysanthemum at roof level. Violet… somewhere, ready to appear when needed. Bad guys: One creepy bug thing. Tall, spindly, about a head or two taller than me. Bulbous, segmented eyes. Mottled grey carapace. Far too many legs. And huge, sharp, scythelike arms.

I say one. I thought it was one. I charged in like it was one. I fought like it was one.

There were three of them. Violet told me afterwards that the other two had been clinging to the walls a ways up, hidden in shadow. The first I knew about it was Kiku crying my name a split second before they descended upon me.

It’s hard to describe combat after the fact, for me. I don’t think about it. There’s no plan. I just act on instinct, and that leaves the memories of the fight less conscious thought and more a stream of sensations. Noise and action and scent and colour. Flashes of slate grey shell and ruby thorns and crimson blood. Slashing, stabbing, tearing. The dull sting of a wound sustained, but that adrenaline won’t yet let me feel. The acrid tang of ozone in the air as Kiku’s arrows crackled their way past my head. The familiar ache of muscle from driving a spear through yet another enemy. The scent of crushed petals and iron, hallmark of Violet’s sudden, deadly appearances.

And just as soon as it had started, it was over.

“No.” 

Kiku stopped sniffling briefly, confused by the firmness in my voice. “What?” 

“No. You didn’t nearly kill me.” Kiku rolled in my lap to face me, to answer back, but I shushed her with a finger to her lips and went on. “You’re not omniscient, and no-one’s telling you that you have to see everything. I charged in. I didn’t assess the situation. Usually, I’m on the ball. Usually, if I miss something, you call it out. Sometimes something will slip past both of us, but that is not your fault. Sometimes I’ll just have to fight my way out, but that is not your fault.”

Absently, my hand drifted up to the bandage on my cheek, over the still-stinging cut I’d sustained from the raking-scythe-claw-thing that had gotten inside my guard. 

“Sometimes things will go wrong. But even if they go all the way wrong, we’ve all made mistakes to get there, and it is absolutely. Not. Your. Fault.”

I closed my eyes and leaned down over her to plant a kiss on her forehead to punctuate the point.

“No.”

This time it was my turn to be surprised by the steel in Kiku’s voice. I opened my eyes again to see hers looking back up at me, glistening with tears but still angry, defiant. Words spilled from her in a raging torrent. “I don’t think I almost killed you because I didn’t call a target. You can-- that’s not my fault, I know that, you don’t need to tell me that. It’s just when they charged you and one of them _hurt_ you and I had to do _something_ , and I, I…”

She trailed off, anger bleeding out of her words as she spoke, replaced with that horrible weariness from earlier. “And I tried to shoot it. And I missed. And I almost killed you.”

The blurred memories of Kiku's electric arrow surging past my head earlier in the night snapped into my mind's eye. Just how close had it been?

I looked at my girlfriend, a tightly wound mess of tears and worry and exhaustion, resting in my lap, still on the verge of tears. Too close, evidently.

"I'm pretty hard to kill," I started to joke. "Remember that fight against the thing with all the spikes? I'm sure an arrow can't-"

She cut me off in a dull monotone, as if reading off a page. "Best case scenario, I catch you somewhere with lots of muscle. No arteries. You probably wouldn't be able to fight again for a while, but it wouldn't be fatal, except for the part where I just zapped you immobile in the middle of a bunch of monsters. Medium case is the same but I… but the arrow catches an artery. Same as before, but this time you're bleeding heavily. If we were really lucky we could get you to a hospital in time." 

She swallowed deeply before continuing. "Worst case, I catch your head or heart. You'd be dead before you hit the ground."

I stared at her slightly for a few moments. "You think about this a lot, don't you?"

"Every time I draw a shot," she confirmed, closing her eyes again. “I just… I don’t know how I could live with myself if I hurt you, Rosie."

I took hold of her, hoisting her off my lap into a firm embrace. She reciprocated, burying her face in my chest and hugging me tightly, tearing up once more. I planted a gentle kiss on her forehead, and spoke softly into it.

"But you didn't. You didn't hurt me, and you're not going to hurt me, and I'm okay, and everything is okay."

I could have responded to her as her teammate- told her the expected value of her shooting into a melee was positive, that the almost-certain chance of doing good far outweighed the downside.

I could have responded to her as her friend. Told her that she was the best shot I'd ever known. That a miss under stress happens to the best of us, that the chance of hitting a friendly is infinitesimal and that it doesn't make her any worse an archer that she missed one little shot in the entire time we'd been fighting together.

But neither of those would have been right. We were here because she loved me. She was so scared because she loved me. And I loved her too, so I responded as her girlfriend, stroking the back of her head, planting kisses and making shushing sounds into her forehead, holding her against me, reassuring her I was still here and that I wouldn't let her go, until her breathing calmed, and her grip slackened, and she slumped against me, exhausted.

"I'm sorry," she said, barely above a whisper. I bundled her up into my arms (met with the faintest sound of protest) and lifted her onto her bed behind me.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. It's okay. You're perfect," I said, clambering into the bed with her. She made a soft groan as I tucked a blanket around us, tucking us in together, her eyes fluttering open briefly.

"Rosie?"

"Kiku?"

She offered me a hand under the covers. "Stay with me," she said. Not a request, not a demand. Just a statement.

I took her hand and squeezed it gently. "Yeah."

She smiled weakly, and closed her eyes again.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

The two of us drifted off into sleep, hand in hand, together.


End file.
